Jimquisition: Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

[KaZuYa]

Well I just reported Muxwell's steam account for posting offensive screenshots after I looked at his store page.

 

[daxterx2005]

Jeez Jim, you're going to need a bigger podium.

 

[ASOkanarie]

I think that a return and refund system might (at least partially) prevent this kind of scamming.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I think I shall visit the Troll Tavern for a good laugh. Anyone else?
It seems to be easy to bilk gamers out of their money...but you need to try a little harder than that. This idiot just seems too lazy.

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

 

[RandV80]

I have a hard time understanding, how do some developers manage to get their crap on Steam in the first place? Like Steam introduced the whole Greenlight, where you'll find hundreds of developers trying to get their games to Steam. Just last week there was an article about a dev who after being unable to get enough greenlight votes released their game on torrents, believing the strength of their product would create good publicity.

So for many it really isn't 'easy' to get a game on Steam. So how does one guy working with what looks like some generic dev kit assets and a few hours of coding manage to slip through and release on Steam? Is it because he's using Valves own source engine, and they give people a free pass when using that or something?

 

[Alterego-X]

At some point, Valve is going to have to do something and institute some standards. Just because the PC platform is "open" is no excuse.

Parks are considered nice open free environments, but eventually you have to put up a "No Dumping" sign.

On thwe other hand, if you own hectars of land under the label of "parks" all accross and around a city, you might eventually have to update your perceptions and acknowledge that some of these areas actually *are* dumps, while others are "recreational gardens".

What steam needs is not the pretense that they are a small wallled garden, but the admittance that they are the whole city, and need to have both dumps and a few small walled gardens somewhere inside their ecosystems.

 

[jehk]

So you're saying its in Valve's interest to be anti-consumer.

Well great.

Just as I was saying, for the consumer, it is pretty irrelevant whether the overarching open platform on which they buy crappy games is called "the PC" or "Steam", and likewise, it's irrelevant whether the small list from they browse promising games is called "Steam" or "Jimothy's Steam recommendation list".

Disagree agree completely "PC" and "Steam" are very different things. Just having a PC doesn't give you the same set of tools and information that having Steam does. Likewise "Jimothy's Steam recommendation list" is also different from Steam's recommendation list. How Jimmy determines his recommendation is different from Steam.

Equivocation fallacy much.

 

[GAunderrated]

Early Access is only a problem because consumers doesn't have the patience to actually research before impulse buying. If developers saw that people were only buying quality products and did their due diligence, they wouldn't feel so comfortable shoveling out crap to bait a few suckers.

That of course is no excuse for a shitty developer trying to silence the community because Hammerpoint Interactive tried that with WarZ aka infestation survivor stories and we all know how well that turned out.

Really the curious thing out of the boom of the indie developers is just how awful they are at responding to massive hate or an explosion of popularity and increased expectations. You would think they have seen enough examples to at least know when to step away from the keyboard and not try dumb things like getting friends to post the games praise.

 

[JoJo]

Hmmm...I wonder what would happen if someone dared to, I don't know...threaten Muxwell with litigation for violating people's rights to their opinions? Seriously...I say hit these idiots with the potential for the worst case scenario and they may stop this bullcrap.

What do you think, Jim?

Nothing would happen, there's no legal right to post your opinion in a privately-owned Internet forum, Muxwell can ban anyone he likes for whatever reason he likes. Of course, it's still a terrible business practice and unethical regardless of legality.

 

[veloper]

I remain unconcerned.
Seriously, who buys this shit anyway? We complain about the mediocrity of the bigger titles made by bigger companies (and rightly so), so why would we suddenly forget to stay wary of random garage developers asking for our money in advance?

Early access games like this are just more clutter on Steam and it's already a massive pile. No big deal.
Ignoring all the early access is the easy part and who browses through everything available on Steam anyway?

 

[Mr_Terrific]

Read my post again. Her actions themselves weren't necessarily justified (again, it's subjective), but her response to the accusations absolutely was.

And of course the amount matters. $6000 is a tiny amount of money to make any sort of production with.

Anyway, it was stupid of me to be baited by the shit flinging towards the topic of Anita Sarkeesian. It doesn't have to come up in every fucking thread anymore.

I'm pretty sure that guy didn't read any of what you said to begin with and I find it comical that he somehow looped Sarkeesian into this. He says "it's pc and there is no quality control on an open platform and that's ok" but then goes on about a woman that did a kickstarter to produce videos based on the works she's already started but that is somehow wrong because there's, apparently, quality control on the internet. And the kicker is pretending like there was nothing but civil conversations and arguments against her views and then brushes off the hundreds of rape threats and terrible behavior like defacing web pages or calling her a scammer which really isn't the case. I find it shameful that there are people out there that are more offended by her ideas than the fools that threatened her with rape and murder.

-----------------------------
As for the topic, Steam has become worse than the IOS/Android markets. Steam will not only allow blatant copies of games, but also ridiculously unfinished games like Earth 20whatever and allow them to be sold for real money. "but but, you should do research and shit...!". The point of the video is that all criticism of the game is being silenced and people like Muxwell are being enabled by Steam to do it. Steam ALLOWS this sort of scamming to go on. WTF happened to Greenlight? Wasn't there a dev not allowed to publish on Steam because they circumvented greenlight, but shit like Earth 20someshit is being sold for not monopoly money?

 

[Thanatos2k]

Also, this is not a professionally made video game. This looks like the final project for someone's college graphics class, a project that wouldn't even get an A.

At some point, Valve is going to have to do something and institute some standards. Just because the PC platform is "open" is no excuse.

Parks are considered nice open free environments, but eventually you have to put up a "No Dumping" sign.

On thwe other hand, if you own hectars of land under the label of "parks" all accross and around a city, you might eventually have to update your perceptions and acknowledge that some of these areas actually *are* dumps, while others are "recreational gardens".

What steam needs is not the pretense that they are a small wallled garden, but the admittance that they are the whole city, and need to have both dumps and a few small walled gardens somewhere inside their ecosystems.

You don't HAVE to accept the nuclear waste and just throw up your hands and say "It has to go somewhere, we might as well take it!"

You can say "Not here in our town. Take it over to Originville."

 

[jehk]

I take issue with one thing you said. We shouldn't be allowed to return a game that is simply shitty. If that were the case I'd get my money back on CoD in a second. Being able to get our money back on broken or misleading games is a must to save Steam imo.

Meh, if it's not been played, it should be fair game for a return. I can return a shirt as long as I haven't worn it--doesn't matter if it doesn't fit or if I just decided I don't like the color.

The problem is drawing the line on "it's not been played." Some games take an hour to get into and find out they suck, while others are finished within an hour.

Honestly, I don't think taking returns for games will ever work, but ideally we could acknowledge this fact an try to come up with some other recourse to give dissatisfied customers that can't be abused. That's a tough one, though.

That could work. I'm not sure how I feel it tbh. My thing is about drawing a distinction between functionally complete but shitty games versus broken incomplete games.

I don't want anyone dictating what's a shitty or good game to me. Frankly, there's a number of games that most people would find shitty that I love.

 

[dmonkoff]

I guess "guise of the wolf" PR manager has finally found a new job.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Clearly he wanted to get one of those cushy jobs at Fun Creators. Move over Jasmine, your time is up.

 

[Alterego-X]

I remain unconcerned.
Seriously, who buys this shit anyway? We complain about the mediocrity of the bigger titles made by bigger companies (and rightly so), so why would we suddenly forget to stay wary of random garage developers asking for our money in advance?

Early access games like this are just more clutter on Steam and it's already a massive pile. No big deal.
Ignoring all the early access is the easy part and who browses through everything available on Steam anyway?

Agreed.

You would have to be pretty fucking hipster to avoid all the hyped and popularly recommended games, and instead dive into a a batch of random "latest released" games.

And if there is a group of people who are into that kind of shit, Steam has no risk of losing them through bad reputation. After all, what else are they going to do? Browse obscure unknown games on Green Man Gaming? To appeal to that, GMG itself would have to do the same thing, let lots of unproven games in.

Meanwhile, for everyone who just wants to buy Kerbal Space Program because they heard it praised in XKCD, Steam's reputation isn't diminished just because it ALSO hosts other games that they never planned to buy.

 

[ASOkanarie]

Early Access is only a problem because consumers doesn't have the patience to actually research before impulse buying. If developers saw that people were only buying quality products and did their due diligence, they wouldn't feel so comfortable shoveling out crap to bait a few suckers.

That of course is no excuse for a shitty developer trying to silence the community because Hammerpoint Interactive tried that with WarZ aka infestation survivor stories and we all know how well that turned out.

Really the curious thing out of the boom of the indie developers is just how awful they are at responding to massive hate or an explosion of popularity and increased expectations. You would think they have seen enough examples to at least know when to step away from the keyboard and not try dumb things like getting friends to post the games praise.

I don't think that Muxwell really cares what people think about his game, at least not in the long term. He's just trying to hide and publicly dismiss criticism for as long as possible so he can milk his game for as long and hard as he can. And once the game no longer sells he will just run off with the cash and you won't see him again until he tries a different scam. As for his "friends" defending the game. I really think they are just sockpuppets or prehaps people who where payed to defend the game.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

alright maybe giving devs mod powers in the forums of their game isnt such a great idea, i can see what valve is trying to do, try to give devs their own forums if they dont have a website, but this story ive seen get repeated way too many times from shitty devs


steam should at least take away the dev's ability to delete threads and posts




i guess the one good thing about this is that steam reviews are doing their job and the store page of the game is flooded with negative reviews as it should be